My ISP at home, WOW, has started filtering DNS lookups and redirecting unresolvable names to their own search site. I found a lengthy discussion of this issue here.  Basically, if you misspell something, a Yahoo search results, and they must be getting some money from Yahoo for the ads that you might click. WOW considers this a "feature" The trouble that this causes is other local resources ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Every three of four months (or so - depending on everyone's schedule) DMC has an all-day off site company meeting to review progress, plan ahead and to try to discuss topics that will improve things both for us and for our customers. Last week we met and the learning focus was on engaging with clients and delivering the DMC "message."  Because we work with such a variety of technol... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Anyone who has ever visited the DMC office probably has made a trip into the friendly 'DMC Annex'.  The 'Annex' (which is not really an annex at all, but rather a sub-office in need of a name due to its friendly welcoming attitude) is home to 3 of our top engineers, Nick Shea, Kristie Simon, and, of course, myself...

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I discovered an interesting issue with the LabVIEW 8.6 TDMS Write / Close routine I want to share and document for anyone else unlucky enough to encounter it.  In defense of LabVIEW, this issue is only encountered if the programmer uses the TDMS Write and Close out of order (yes, I admit to this).  However, in my defense, the error produced by such a 'boneheaded' programming mistake shou... [Read the rest of this blog...]

In the beginning, all of the important files at DMC fit onto a single 100MB iomega ZIP disk.  Since 1996 we have grown to a 25 person company and gone from 0 servers to 6.  We used BackupExec for a couple years but then switched to Dantz Retrospect for it's superior ability to redundent incremental backup sets.   Dantz Retrospect became EMC Retrospect in a merger, and now (over... [Read the rest of this blog...]

For at least 9 years (maybe even 10) DMC has been entering a contingency of runners in the annual Bastille Day Race in Chicago's West Loop. This year we get to crown the newest member of our team as the fastest member of our team.  Jesse Batsche, who joined us in January, unseated Jody Koplo as the "World's Fastest Engineer who works at DMC" The race times and per mile pace are as f... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Recent press releases by NASA show how the agency is realizing the advantages of using Structured Light for 3D vision. A recent Nasa Invention of the Year was a hand-held, battery-operated scanner that they use to create surface maps of shuttle tile damage. The same high-speed 3D scanner technology can also be used for longer range 3D measurements.  NASA is investigating using this metho... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Recently I've had the opportunity to do some embedded development using the .NET Micro Framework platform.  The .NET Micro Framework is a light-weight version of the full .NET framework that can be ported to run on a variety of processors, including the ARM and Blackfin architectures. Using the .NET Framework, developers can implement their solutions in C#.  While develop... [Read the rest of this blog...]

I have been using Acroloop 9000 controllers to control a number of machines where one axis is a high speed rotary motor that drives a mechanical cam-driven process.  During operation of the machine, the motor accelerates from a stop to a constant high speed, and then back to a stop.  The mechanical cam performs dozens of cycles during the process while the motor is at constant speed.... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Recently I was using OneNote to compile a lot of test data from Excel and ran into a problem.  My data was in a number of different worksheets and when I dragged and dropped the Excel file as a printout into OneNote, I only got 1 of the sheets, not all of the many sheets of data.

I didn't want to keep inserting the sheets 1 by 1 so I looked into it and I figured out how to get the whole workbook into OneNote in 1 fell swoop...

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I recently finished a project that checked for gas leaks on a mission critical system. Any leaks needed to be diagnosed and discovered as quickly as possible. Our solution also had to be mobile and easily carted around the facility. To develop a system that was incredibly reliable and also capable of displaying and logging important data, we settled on an architecture that used a National Instrum... [Read the rest of this blog...]

At DMC we make heavy use of Microsoft SharePoint in almost everything we do from project management to financial tracking.  We use Excel Services to display real time key performance indicators.  Several of us in the office have recently updated to Internet Explorer 8.  A couple of us have found a peculiar problem with IE8 and SharePoint pages with Excel Services.  The pr... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Ladder diagrams are an industrial programming language typically used on programmable logic controllers (PLC). This graphical language mimics a relay logic electrical schematic. For engineers that are not familiar with relay logic, though, ladder diagrams can be difficult to implement, debug, and maintain, especially when programming complicated machines with many inputs, outpu... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Some time ago, the staff of the Advanced Powertrain Research Facility at Argonne National Laboratory asked me if we could create a robotic driver to control speed of a vehicle on their dynamometer.  There are off-the-shelf solutions for this task but it would be difficult to get the level of configurability and integration needed with these systems. We used LabVIEW to develop a relative... [Read the rest of this blog...]

I am proud to announce that DMC has achieved Certified Wonderware Integrator Status. To achieve Certified System Integrator Status, DMC has fulfilled the following certification requirements of the Wonderware SI Ecosystem Program: Two or more developers must complete individual product training and pass CSI tests. Two successful projects must be executed and documented to earn produc... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC demonstrated our LabVIEW expertise again by receiving seven new certifications, including three Architect Certifications, putting DMC among the highest level of LabVIEW Architects in the country.  With the additional Developer Certifications, DMC now has the most LabVIEW certifications in the region. Congratulations to four new Certified LabVIEW Developers:  Danny Budzinski, Eric Ni... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Microsoft has just released Internet Explorer 8.  Unfortunately, some of the pages on our website have some issues when viewed with IE8's default settings.  In particular, the styling that we've done on our main page's tab control is causing issues.  Users can fix these issues on the client side by selecting compatibility mode (the button to the right of the URL field shown below). ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

You've finished and double checked your schematic, all the footprints have been loaded or created, and you've layed out all of your components on your board.  Now it is time to route the traces.  Traditionally board designers route traces by hand, giving them complete control over everything.  However there definitely are times and places for the auto-routing tool: Simple bo... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Like many offices, we have adapted the use of instant messenger while at work.  It allows us to stay in quick contact of eachother, even when working remotely at customer sites.  The network we use is the Yahoo Messenger network. Some of us use the default client, but many of us have switched over to Pidgin.  The main advantage of Pidgin is the ability to link other IM networks to ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

As in previous entries, here I will be exploring one of our Customer Service Fundamentals: Understand, Manage, and Where Possible, Exceed Expectations Managing expectations can really only happen when they are first understood.  The simplest way to do this is to discuss, ask and then listen.  Amazing how often this simple step is missed. After expectations are properly understood... [Read the rest of this blog...]